PARIS, July 7 – Once again, Yohji Yamamoto chose to show his Ready-to-Wear line during Couture, a full two months ahead of the usual schedule. This Spring collection, he said, was an exercise in “doing something graphic.” That meant working squares of fabric, linked Paco Rabanne–style with metal rings, into many variations of bodices, which came attached to long, flowing skirts. The surprise was the sense of body that came through—literally. Though he stayed almost entirely with his habitual black, cutting pinafore dresses and overalls suspended from complex straps and ties, the torso beneath was naked, save for body paint, applied in chalky blocks by Shiseido.

If street and refined, or luxe and cool sound like fashion-world opposites, Rick Owens brought them together into a beautiful New Age merger in his first Ready-to-Wear show for Revillon furs. (Like Yohji Yamamoto, Owens showed during Couture week, three months ahead of the Spring 2004 pack.) On a sunny Paris morning, in a disused eighteenth-century townhouse, he sent out a collection that fused his trademark underground aesthetic with the luxury pedigree of the French furrier. Over his familiar baseline of fine, stretchy, neutral tanks and cropped, cross-dyed, distressed denims, he layered a succession of soft shrugs, vests, jackets, and coats, constructed in hip melanges of fur and skin.